


Christmas Present

by hellostarlight20



Series: The Adventures of Bad Wolf and the TARDIS...and their Doctor [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Romance, Rose and Jenny save the day, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 01:35:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13260861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellostarlight20/pseuds/hellostarlight20
Summary: After the events of I Will...Ten, Rose, and Jenny explore a Christmas market.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kelkat9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kelkat9/gifts), [LizAnn_5869](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizAnn_5869/gifts).



> For @lizziea2 who asked for: Could I ask for some Christmas fluff for the TARDIS family of the Doctor, Rose and Jenny after the events of “I will....”?  
> And @kelkat9 who wanted: Christmas Prompt: I Will Verse; Ten/Rose; The Night They Saved Christmas

“Clearly Bing is the best.” Rose sniffed and glared at the Doctor. She didn’t really mean it—the glare, obviously; Bing was the best—and knew he knew that, but he looked suitably offended nonetheless.

“Frank,” he insisted. “Or Nat.”

“Judy,” Rose shot back.

“Ohh, good one! But alas, no. Not the best.”

“Who are these people?” Jenny, wide-eyed and bouncing with excitement, barely glanced at either of them as she walked next to Rose. “Are they here at the market?”

“No.” Rose laughed but tugged Jenny closer, looping her arm through her daughter’s. It still felt odd, calling her that, but the three of them agreed that they were a family, if not quite the conventional kind. But who cared about convention? “They’re singers. Classic Christmas singers.”

“Do they have Christmas singers here?” Jenny looked around the Bonn Christmas Market stalls the afternoon before Christmas Eve. Each vendor and their little pointed-roof stall caught her attention and so far they’d bought a dozen little knickknacks and three mugs of mulled wine.

“Not some of this rubbish you here on the radio now,” the Doctor added and swung his hand, joined with Rose's, between them. “Unfortunately, all the good ones are dead in this time.” He frowned and shook it off. “We can always go back and hear them, perks of a time machine.”

“Ohh, can we?” Jenny bounced in front of them, so excited and buoyant.

“Course!” The Doctor grinned back, and Rose caught a hint of longing from him. “We can go wherever you want,” he promised.

It warmed Rose’s heart to see Jenny like this, to see her at all. She wondered what might’ve happened if she hadn’t jumped right at that time, at the same moment General Cobb fired at the Doctor. 

Rose shuddered and blocked that thought off, refusing to let it unfurl more than it already had. She had jumped right at that moment and Jenny was right there with them, curious and eager and alive. Currently, Martha and Donna were home with their families after having extracted promises that the three of them would visit for the holidays.

And Jack…Rose still hadn’t fully forgiven the Doctor for abandoning Jack or keeping all that happened to him from her, but they were slowly working through it. 

“Shakin’ Stevens?” The Doctor tilted his head from side to side and shrugged. “Top fifteen, maybe.”

“If we’re doing classic British, I’d go with Wizzard’s _I Wish it could be Christmas Everyday_.”

“Always a classic,” The Doctor agreed. “As is Slade’s _Merry Christmas Everybody_.”

“Ohh, that’s a fun one.” She bounced up and down like the band did in the song. “Look to the future now, it’s only just begun!” she sang. Turning her grin to him she laughed and bumped his shoulder. “You’re certainly up on your classic British Christmas music!” She rested her head on his arm and simply reveled in being so near him again.

“I saw Slade and Wizzard in concert,” the Doctor admitted. “In my, oh, third body.” He frowned and sighed. “When the Time Lords disabled my TARDIS and trapped me on Earth.”

The flash of anger and resentment didn’t surprise her. The Doctor altered between remorse over his actions during the Time War and fury over the Time Lords’ short-sighted pompousness.

 _“I love you,”_ Rose sighed and closed her eyes. “ _Whatever the body.”_

Rose heard Jenny ahead of them, talking to one of the vendors about a handmade blanket. She didn’t want to exclude Jenny, especially since it’d been mere weeks since her, ah, birth, but it’d been the same amount of time since Rose’s return. She balanced between daughter and lover, and knew the Doctor did as well, but Jenny seemed to understand and loved exploring the TARDIS on her own.

The Doctor kissed the top of her head and held her hand that much tighter. _“I love you, too, my hearts.”_

Rose looked up at him and stopped. Standing on tiptoes, she kissed him, sighing into the softness of the kiss and letting his love warm her.

“You two finished?” Rose opened her eyes to see Jenny rolling hers, but the other woman grinned wider. “Who are we going to see first?”

“Elvis.” Rose nodded decisively. “Definitely Elvis.”

The Doctor opened his mouth, but no argument emerged. She felt his frustration—he hadn’t been the one to suggest the King and mildly resented her beating him to it. Finally, he huffed and nodded.

“Definitely in the top…two,” the Doctor agreed.

Jenny stopped at the stall over, one that served roasted chestnuts, alas not over an open fire. Rose quickly paid for them while her daughter took the bag and sniffed the contents. Jenny selected a chestnut and licked it.

“Definitely your daughter!” Rose grinned over her shoulder at the Doctor’s spluttering as the merchant handed her the change.

The tall man wished them, “Gesegnete Weihnachten und ein glückliches neues Jahr!”

“A blessed Christmas and a happy new year to you, too!” Rose returned, once more grateful for the TARDIS translation circuit.

The Doctor walked to her side, still talking to Jenny about chestnuts, roasting, open fires, the song, the history, and the act of actually roasting chestnuts over an open fire. But his desperation to touch her, as anxious for her touch as Rose was for his, had him reaching for her before they’d gone more than half a step. Their month together, really, physically together, wasn’t long enough as far as she was concerned, but they did promise Jenny.

 _“She’s so happy,”_ the Doctor sighed, physically and mentally. _“I had no idea—”_

 _“No idea, what?”_ Rose looked up at him, contentment and concern warring for dominance. “Doctor?”

“I’d forgotten what it felt like,” he whispered, “Traveling with family.”

Rose leaned up and pressed her lips to his. “I’m so glad I’m here for this.”

“I am, too.” The Doctor wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

She knew he didn’t want to let her go, Rose didn’t want to step from his embrace, either. So she rested her head over one of his hearts and closed her eyes. The cold December wind buffeted them, but she didn’t care.

The myriad market scents swirled around them, and Rose hummed, perfectly content where she stood. She felt the Doctor’s happiness, his cautious hope about Jenny, and burrowed deeper into his embrace, letting his coat wrap around them both.

“I love you,” he whispered against her temple.

Rose shivered at his touch, the gentle brush of his mind against hers, the inherent promise in both his words and touch, and met his gaze. “I love you, too. Always. Forever.”

He grinned just as Jenny ran over to them, excitedly talking about the stall one over and the ornaments they sold.

“One has snow in it!” She said, eyes alight with happiness. “Real snow!”

“It’s not real,” Rose began gently. She hated spoiling Jenny’s enthusiasm. “It’s—I don’t know what’s inside.” She wrinkled her nose. “Probably something horrible I don’t want to think about, but it’s not real snow.”

Rose wrapped her arms around herself and debated pulling on her gloves. No, she didn’t want to add a barrier between her hand and the Doctor’s no matter the frigid temperature. Still, her hands were frozen, and she shoved them in her deep pockets.

“No, he said it was real,” Jenny insisted. Her own smile didn’t diminish, and she shoved her hands into her coat pockets, too.

Rose stared at the move. Jenny didn’t do it because she was cold; now that Rose looked the move was so obvious! Jenny wore a coat because it’d look odd if she didn’t in December in Bonn, but she didn’t need to. Just as she didn’t need to keep her hands warm, if the Doctor’s were anything to go by. Jenny shoved her hands in her pocket, because that’s what the Doctor did. And now, that’s what Rose did.

Her heart warmed and burst with affection for this woman. 

“Let’s go see these snow globes,” Rose said and tugged the Doctor along. She once more locked her arm with Jenny’s and delighted in the feeling of family.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always all my thanks goes to Mrs. Bertucci for her amazing beta and to my girls from FB where we had a great British Christmas song discussion!

2.  
Rose ducked behind one of the stalls and crouched down, hoping the top of her head wasn’t visible from the other side. The stall wasn’t as tall as she expected. But damn, the ground froze her arse. The cold concrete seeped through her jeans and made her shiver.

Or maybe that was the broken bond with the Doctor, her terror for her family, and the fact she was being chased with intent to kill.

“What are you doing here?” A tall, older woman peered down at her with a cross between astonishment and annoyance.

“Hiding from my ex.” Rose blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “He followed me here.”

The woman peered at her as if she didn’t believe Rose, but whatever the vendor saw on her face must’ve seemed credible and she nodded. Heart racing, she reached out for the Doctor, but felt only a faint buzz. Kind of like when he’d been sucked into Chloe Webber’s alien world during the 2012 Olympics.

Then, Rose had panicked. To be fair, she was panicking now, too. Then, she hadn’t the experience of universal separation, those long, long months of headaches and loneliness. Now, Rose listened for the heavy footsteps of the aliens who had literally sucked the Doctor and Jenny into their snow globes.

Years of traveling with the Doctor had taught her a lot. The number one item on that list was that if it wanted to hurt the Doctor, chances were it didn’t care about her. Item number two was that running and hiding offered her the opportunity to plan out a rescue.

Hence the hiding behind the mulled wine stall. On the plus side, it smelled heavenly here.

Rose peeked around the stall and hoped the aliens, she hadn’t caught their species, carried the snow globe with them. Yes! Their large hands, roughly twice the size of hers, cradled the globe as if it were the most precious thing in the universe. Her heart tripped over itself—to Rose, it was.

“You want me to call the police?” the woman asked casually. She looked for all the world as if she hadn’t a care and wasn’t keeping an eye on the trio in front of her stall.

“No, but thanks. I’m here with my husband, just need to find him.”

The woman snorted. “Your ex followed you and your husband?” She shook her head. “Men. Can’t handle rejection.”

Rose laughed, but her heart wasn’t in it. Her mind reached for the Doctor’s or Jenny’s, though she hadn’t established a telepathic bond with Jenny. Something to work on—after Rose saved her family from kidnapping, snow globe carrying aliens.

“They’re moving off,” the woman said, still in that easy, amenable tone that showed nothing wrong in her stall.

Rose nodded and stood, shoulders tense, heart racing. “Thanks. What’s your name?”

“Derica,” she said with another small smile.

“Derica, beautiful name.” She wondered what it meant but didn’t ask. She’d ask the Doctor when she got him out of that stupid snow globe. “I’m Rose.” She looked at Derica and quickly hugged her. “Not many would help or get involved. I owe you.”

The tall, blonde snorted. To be fair, Derica looked like she could’ve taken on the trio of kidnapping, snow globe carrying aliens, but her cheeks flushed. “It’s nothing no one else wouldn’t have done.”

Looking at her seriously, Rose hoped Derica understood the meaning behind the trite words. “Yes. It is. Not everyone would’ve helped, but you did. Thank you.”

Derica stood a little taller and nodded. “You’re welcome, Rose.”

Rose stepped around the stall and looked down the street to where she could just see the trio. They didn’t look like they’d given up on hunting her down, but moved more methodically now, searching around every stall, every corner, still cradling the snow globe.

“Rose,” Derica called in a hushed, insistent tone. “If you don’t mind me saying, that man, your ex, he didn’t look human.”

Rose froze but shot Derica a grin. “You know what they say, men are from Mars.” Waving at the other woman, Rose slipped between the stalls and followed the aliens who’d kidnapped her family.

****  
Jenny walked away from the eight others who had been trapped inside this snow globe and looked to the Doctor, who pressed the heels of his hands to his closed eyes. She thought that might hurt, especially since he already looked to be in pain, but she didn’t comment. The truth was, this whole family thing was still so new, she didn’t know how it worked.

Family. Not one of the things downloaded into her memory.

Tactics were, however, and right now her analytical brain analyzed this prison for a way out. The others had followed her from the small lean-to sheltering them from what was supposed to be artificial snow. The cold in here felt real enough for real snow, but Jenny didn’t know what real snow tasted like. Made it hard to compare the flakes on her tongue with anything outside the globe-prison.

The prisoners stood behind her, all in varying stages of fright, but Jenny’s only concern was her dad and Rose—her mum.

The other eight, all human, were all visiting the Bonn Christmas Market during the season, and were all scared. Well, she had promised to get them out of there, alive and in one piece. They’d believed her, too, though Jenny wasn’t sure why or if they were right to do so. 

She grinned, determination solidified.

“It’s all right, Dad.” She helped him sit and kissed the top of his head like she’d seem him do to Rose. It seemed to comfort her mum. “I’ll get us out of here.”

“Jenny.” He looked up, brown eyes slightly glazed with pain.

It took Jenny aback, seeing her strong, stoic, proud father admit to pain let alone to her. It also reinforced her determination.

The Doctor pressed his fingers to his eyes once more, then stood. He swayed so slightly, no one else probably would’ve noticed. Jenny did. But he stood before her, shoulders back, his own determination written clear on his face.

“Let’s get out of here,” he agreed.

“What’s the glass made of, do you know?” Jenny pushed on it, but it felt solid beneath her fingers. “And how much air do we have in here? Is it porous? I don’t smell the market, smells—” she wrinkled her nose.

The Doctor stared at her, but she couldn’t place the look he gave her. Pride, yes, astonishment maybe. And something else there Jenny didn’t have a word for. He cleared his throat and looked behind them.

“Yes, well.” Then he laughed and shook his head. His lips tightened slightly at the movement, but again Jenny thought only she noticed.

Maybe Mum, too.

“Best not to think on the air situation, hmm?” The Doctor looked back to the glass and pulled out his glasses. Peering at it, he leaned closer and licked it.

“Ew! Dad! You better clean your teeth before kissing Mum.” Jenny shook her head but had to stop from licking the globe herself. “What did it taste like?”

“Hmm, interesting composition,” the Doctor admitted and folded his glasses back into his pocket. “Telepathic dampener, too.” He smacked his tongue against his teeth. “Bit of a mineral I can’t identify. It is porous—but only in.”

“In?” Jenny cocked her head. “You mean we can hear what’s going on outside, but they can’t hear us?”

“Yes.” He shook his head. “No. Yes, we can breathe air from outside. So that answers the air problem. They can’t hear us and, clearly, we can’t hear them or we’d be overwhelmed with the sound. Notice the silence.”

“So if Mum’s shouting for us, we won’t hear her?”

The Doctor rocked back on his heels and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Oh, Rose isn’t shouting.” He rubbed his temple and Jenny wondered if her mum shouted in his head. They hadn’t really explored telepathy yet, though it was on the Doctor’s list of things to teach her.

Jenny mentally moved it up several spots.

“Do you think if we pushed?” Jenny touched the glass again, but other than an odd vibrating cold, felt nothing. She once more resisted licking it. Her mum really didn’t like it when the Doctor licked things, and Jenny didn’t want That Look ™ directed at her. “If we break out, will we still be this size? Or is the globe large enough to fit us?”

“I think we shrunk,” Aixa said.

Jenny looked at her, blue eyes wide, light brown hair pulled into a pair of braids that fell along her shoulders, gloved hands wrapped around her body. She was visiting from Travenbrück, a small hamlet northeast of Hamburg. First time away from home on her own, she’d told Jenny.

And now she was trapped.

No. Jenny straightened and walked to Aixa. “Why do you say that?”

“They had some sort of gun,” Aixa said. “And my mobile isn’t working. So I think they shrunk us and disrupted communications.”

“It looked like no weapon I am familiar with,” Marek, visiting from Poland, added. “My mobile isn’t working, either.”

The others also held up their useless mobiles, and Jenny suddenly realized she didn’t have one. First thing after escaping. Well, maybe second. But no lower than fifth on her list.

“I also believe we’ve been here longer than a few hours.,” Barbara, older British woman in Bonn with her husband, Tom, said. “However, I am neither hungry nor tired.”

“Really?” The Doctor glanced over his shoulder at her and nodded as if her words confirmed what he thought. “Stasis of some sort, then.”

Jenny frowned and looked to her dad, who also frowned. “A shrinking gun?” She tilted her head. “A stasis shrinking gun? Is there such a thing?”

The Doctor laughed. “There’s always such a thing. Question is, why?”

“No.” Jenny pushed against the glass again. “The question is, how do we get out?” She looked over her should to Aixa, Marek, and the six others. “Come on, if you want to get out of here, we all have to work together.”

From the corner of her eye, Jenny saw the Doctor’s proud grin then he, too, pushed against the glass.


	3. Chapter 3

3  
Rose crossed her arms over her chest. “You kidnapped my family. Why?”

The three aliens cornered her in an alleyway, away from market-goers and innocent bystanders. They all pointing guns of some sort at her—killing weapons or whatever they used to take the Doctor and Jenny from beside her talking about snow globes into their particular snow globe—didn’t back down from her patented glare. She’d have to work on that. They also didn’t answer.

“Who else did you take? I know you understand me.” The TARDIS hummed in her head, fully operational and pissed as hell that her family had been taken from her.

Rose wondered if She always felt like that when the Doctor was in trouble, but until her time in that other universe, hadn’t noticed despite her bond with the TARDIS. A memory—brief and blurry, vague—flashed before her mind’s eye. Of Martha walking the Earth, carrying the fob watch the Doctor once hid his Time Lordy self in.

She’d heard all about Martha’s walk around the world, of course, and the Doctor shared his own memories of that time, the Year from Hell. This image felt more hers than someone else’s. Or maybe it was both, hers and the TARDIS’s.

Rose promised herself, and the TARDIS, she’d look into it later.

“No? Nothing? Well.” Rose dropped her arms and planted her feet, braced to duck or run or tackle meaty-paws and grab the snow globe. “I guess you should know that you’re in violation of at least a dozen Shadow Proclamation laws. This is a Level Five planet,” she added, pulling from her memory everything the Doctor had ever said about Earth. “And _it is protected_. Give me the globe. And run.”

Nothing. Not a peep—though did one of their guns waver? Waver or steady, it was hard to tell. Rose tensed.

“You speak our language so obviously know who we are.” The one holding the snow globe—the leader? —scowled at her.

Not a clue, but Rose met his scowl with one of her own. “How did you think you’d pass on Earth?”

He—or she, Rose didn’t know the gender or if they even had genders—scoffed. “We have been here nine days. They notice nothing, these pathetic Earthlings.”

“Humans,” Rose automatically corrected. “We prefer Humans. But you should know that if you’ve been here nine days.”

What she had said to Derica in the stall had been right, sadly so. No one had noticed the disappearance of whoever else these beings had taken or the fact that they only barely resembled humans.

The long, sloping ears and the gill-like slits on their throats should’ve been a dead giveaway but alas.

“This is the part where you tell me why you’re on my planet and what you want with Humans.” Rose emphasized that last. It seemed important they know the difference between Humans and Earthlings, though she couldn’t fathom why. Maybe it was the pounding in her head where the Doctor’s telepathic presence ought to be. Maybe she was feeling nitpicky.

The one holding the gun laughed. “No, I don’t think so. This is the part where we add you to our collection.”

Collection? Hmm, all right. Either they wanted Humans for pets—not the first time she’d heard that—or slaves or even repopulation. Possibly to experiment on, but usually scientists didn’t add to a collection for experimentation. That was a very specific word, that.

The part of the snow globe facing her bulged. 

“No,” Rose shot back. “I don’t think so. This is the part where your collection escapes.”

Oh, the confused looks on their faces! A frown was a frown was a frown, and apparently _fuck_ truly was a universal curse word. Rose smirked and crossed her arms over her chest again. She really wanted to press her fingers to her temples and curl into a ball, but now so wasn’t the time.

The globe itself, average sized and clear glass, had undoubtedly developed a protuberance on the side. The being holding it gaped—Rose valiantly tried not to snicker but doubted she succeeded—and nearly dropped it on the pavement.

He juggled the globe. Rose braced to luge for it if he dropped it. What happened if it shattered? Did it kill her family? Her thudding heart skipped, but the alien steadied the globe. The swelling stopped, but didn’t rescind.

Jenny and the Doctor had to be pushing from the inside. When the alien fumbled the globe, it must’ve shaken them from the glass, which was why the swelling stopped. They were trying to escape and believed they could by physically pushing their way out. So…if they pushed from inside, that meant shattering the snow globe would free them.

Rose met the alien’s gaze, wider now as he held the snow globe tight. If he didn’t want to shatter the globe, either, then breaking it _did_ free them.

She grinned. He stepped back. The other two had regained their wits and now aimed their weapons at her. Rose ignored them. She focused on the middle man and braced herself.

Two steps away from him. He held the globe in both large hands, Rose doubted she’d be able to knock it from him. He’d be more careful now that he’d almost dropped it. He met her gaze and stepped back, still cradling the snow globe.

Rose leaped forward.

She didn’t knock the snow globe out of his hands. Rose didn’t even focus on him. No, she rammed into the alien on his left, holding the ray gun on her. Knocking into him, she angled it just right—she hoped—so his taller, heavier frame knocked into the middle man.

Like a domino effect, the three of them toppled down in the midst of grunts, curses, and frantic scrambling.

The snow globe hit the pavement. Almost instantly, the bulge on the side, thinner than the rest of the glass now, Rose presumed, shattered. Ten people suddenly appeared in the middle of the otherwise deserted alleyway, normal height and looking none-the-worse for being trapped inside a snow globe.

“Doctor!” Rose ran to him and crushed him tight in her arms. She reached out and pulled Jenny to her as well. “Are you both all right?”

Very reluctantly, she stepped back, out of the Doctor’s arms and the gorgeous feel of him back in her head where he belonged.

“We have to stop separating like this,” he whispered and pressed his lips to hers. “I thought we agreed, no more telepathic distance?”

She choked out a laughing sob and kissed him hard, letting his love and relief, his very presence, soothe her. “I’ll work on that. Haven’t been back all that long, you know.”

“Mum, you all right?” Jenny sounded concerned and Rose turned to look at her.

“Yeah, darling.” She sighed and pulled the other woman into a tight hug. “You?”

“You’re bleeding.”

Rose frowned and looked down. Sure enough, her jeans were ripped at the knees, which were scrapped and bleeding. And, now that she noticed it, damn cold! “Oh. That’s nothing. Just a little street brawl.”

She jerked her head to the trio on the ground, which was odd, Rose had expected them to make a hasty retreat.

But then she noticed the others—all those who’d also been trapped in the snow globe now blocked the alleyway exit and refused to let the aliens by. Even though two of them pointed their guns at the Humans, no one budged.

Rose hoped they didn’t have another snow globe.

“And who do we have here?” The Doctor, hands in his trouser pockets in a deceptively casual pose, strolled to the trio.

The Humans shivered. If the aliens had any brains, they’d have shuddered at the barely repressed fury in his voice. They did not. Instead, they turned to face him. They didn’t lower their guns and didn’t dare look in her direction.

Maybe her glare had had some effect on them. Or maybe it was the tackling, snow globe breaking that did.

“You have never heard of us, Human,” the middle one sneered.

Which was a sharp turn from assuming Rose knew who they were because they thought she spoke their language. He did, however, use Human instead of Earthling. Rose considered that a point in her favor.

“Oh, but I’m not Human.” The Doctor stopped just out of arm’s reach from the trio. “You should’ve scanned me before you kidnapped me and my daughter and caused my wife to bleed.”

No reply. Rose hadn’t really expected one. 

“Now, then, a simple twist of my sonic.” In a flash, he pulled it from his inner jacket pocket and twisted a setting. “I can summon the Judoon. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.”

“I did try to warn you.” Rose closed the distance between she and Jenny, and the Doctor. “Told you this planet is protected.”

“They never listen,” The Doctor sighed dramatically.

“Why did you kidnap us?” Jenny asked. “Why trap us in a snow globe?”

“Easy transport,” the middle man snapped then sighed and pressed his lips tightly closed.

“Piracy?” The Doctor shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Even pirates know a Level Five planet is off limits. You’d have to be very desperate, or very stupid, to come here.”

“Which is it?” Jenny asked, and she sounded genuinely curious.

Rose snickered. That was so very Jenny.

“We have it on good authority the Protector is dead,” Alien on the Left said and lowered his gun.

Rose shivered but not from the biting cold. “What do you mean?”

“The Doctor,” the middle man said. “He has died, opening up this planet to all its riches.”

“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” The Doctor stiffened, but didn’t look at her.

_“Who’s spreading rumors of your death?”_ Rose demanded. _“Or did someone lie to them to get them to Earth?”_

_“No idea,”_ he admitted. “ _But they’re not the leaders, so I doubt they know.”_

Just then a pair of ginormous rhinoceroses beamed into the alleyway. They spoke only a couple words in Judoonan, which the TARDIS refused to translate for reasons Rose didn’t want to examine. Just as quickly as they appeared, they disappeared with the trio, minus the shards of snow globe.

“It’s over,” Jenny said to the group of Humans who’d been taken. “They’ve been arrested and are being dealt with.”

Rose turned to the Doctor and hugged him tight. Jenny continued to talk to the others, answering questions and glossing over the whole aliens are real thing. All told, the eight people who’d been held captive for at least nine days took it relatively well.

“I know what my favorite Christmas song is,” the Doctor whispered against her temple.

“What?” Rose pulled back just enough to meet his gaze. 

“Christmas Present.”

“Aww, that’s sweet but making up a song doesn’t count.” Even as she said the words, Rose knew he hadn’t made up the title.

The intensity of his love for her washed over her skin, dark and possessive, consuming. All he was, all he wanted to be, she knew and held in her hands. His hearts. Rose blinked and took his hands, holding tight onto him.

“Doctor?”

“It’s by the Skyliners.”

“The who?” Rose shook her head and chuckled. “I’ve never heard of them. Or the song.”

The Doctor hummed a few bars then sang softly, “Baby, you’re my Christmas past, my Christmas present, my Christmas always.”

“I love you,” Rose whispered and kissed him.

_“I love you, too, my hearts.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=AFyO917RwY


End file.
